The House Energy and Commerce environment subcommittee is scheduled today to mark up legislation intended to advance development of interim and permanent storage of U.S. nuclear waste, with an eye toward Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
Rep. John Shimkus’ (R-Ill.) Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2017, as the title indicates, would make dozens of changes to the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act that assigned DOE to site and build a storage site for what is now tens of thousands of tons of spent fuel and high-level radioactive waste stored around the nation. Congress in 1987 updated the legislation to set Yucca Mountain as the repository site.
Among the changes, the bill would require DOE by June 1, 2019, to submit a proposal for one or more “monitored retrievable storage” sites for nuclear waste, including designs, specifications, and cost projections for soliciting bids for the facilities and then providing for completion and operation of such sites “as soon as practicable.”
The new legislation would permanently set aside 147,000 acres of land in Nye County, Nev., the area covered by the Yucca Mountain Project Map. The energy secretary would then have authority over the area for development, testing, licensing, construction, operations, closure, and postclosure of a disposal site for spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste. All public land orders and rights-of-way would be revoked.
The proposal also amends the 1982 bill to provide a five-year term for the director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, the Yucca Mountain oversight entity that was eliminated during the Obama administration. The director would be required to have “expertise and experience in organizational and project management” and would be limited to two five-year terms.
The subcommittee is scheduled to begin its markup at 10 a.m. The session will also address two non-nuclear bills.
Nevada’s congressional delegation has vehemently opposed reviving Yucca Mountain, and Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev.) did not hold back after the markup hearing was announced: “This legislation usurps the State’s water rights, removes the cap on the amount of waste originally allowed at the proposed Yucca Mountain facility, ignores the majority of Nevadans who do not want a repository in our state, and overlooks the 329 congressional districts that would be along the waste’s shipping route.”
